Find Out Who Owns Your Domain Name

A small oversight can lead to big problems. Losing track of where your domain name is registered and which email account it was registered under is something you probably want to double-check. Many times an employee sets up a domain name under a personal account and then leaves the business, leaving the owner unable to manage their own domain name.

One of the biggest problems this can lead to is losing your domain name altogether. Domain registrars usually will send an email notification letting you know your domain is about to expire. If these emails are ignored or not seen your domain name can be lost to someone else. What will likely happen is that your domain name will be picked up by a reseller once it expires and you’ll have to pay up to thousands of dollars to get it back. In the meantime, your website and any email addresses associated with your domain will be non-functioning.

To avoid this catastrophe, make sure your domain’s contact information is up to date. If you don’t know where your domain is registered you can find out by typing it into one of these WHOIS services:

Once you find out where your domain name is hosted try to log into your account. If you can’t log into your account because it’s registered with an email address you don’t have access to then fix that now! Find out who has access to that email address and get your login information. Immediately update the email address associated with the domain to one you have access to. Don’t use an email address that uses the domain but rather a business gmail or yahoo address. If you don’t have one of those yet read our other post “Small Business Web Accounts“.

Taking the time to make sure your domain name’s contact information is properly set up is well worth it. You’ll avoid big problems and it will be much easier to update if you ever need to move your website to a new hosting provider, like, oh, say, Modscape, for instance.